Saturday, 13 April 2013

Squeaky Wheels

Despite a quantitative personality and active efforts to
achieve the contrary, The Spear somehow now finds himself in a position
involving the management of human resources.Needless to say he finds the management of people somewhat of a
challenge, given that he struggles to maintain the officious decorum seemingly
demanded of ‘normal’ mammal-to-mammal communications at the best of times, let
alone in the workplace.Yet despite this
preference for numbers over nuance, he has been able to pick up on one piece of
overwhelming truth while in this position; the squeaky wheel definitely gets
the grease.

The corporate world has been quick to hijack this response mechanism. A ringing phone, a text message, an email
notification, a reminder, somebody shouting at you: these are all essentially
alarms of some sort. During a standard
work day, a worker in a reactive role may be ‘alarmed’ hundreds of times. Entire days are spent ‘putting out fires’ so
to speak, living in the moment as if in a battle.

Some people have likewise developed the skill of ‘squeaking’
to achieve an end. While others suffer
in silence, the Squeaker squeaks away, hijacking the minds of those who can
potentially give them what they want.
Where the silent type relies on a naive faith in a ‘fair world’, in
which resources are deployed on a merit-based or a first-come-first-serve
basis, the Squeaker - ever the persistent ‘pain in the neck’ – knows that
fairness is a luxury of abundance, and that in its absence, applying pressure
pays.

Christmas day 2012; The Spear had just arrived at an airport
to catch a connecting flight, only to be told that his flight had been cancelled
and that he would have to wait for the next flight in 4 hours. He asked the attendant if there were any
earlier flights, but she said ‘no’, and that check-in had just closed on an
earlier flight. The Spear said ‘ok’, taking
the stoical approach that as there was nothing he could do about it, there was
no need to get angry, and accepted that he would be late for the family
Christmas lunch. It sucked, but he put
up with it.

A woman and her young son then approached the counter and were
told the same thing, but where The Spear folded, the woman squeaked. Calling it ‘unacceptable’, because her and
her son would miss the family Christmas gathering (as if this was a circumstance
unique to her on Christmas day), she applied the pressure of the squeaky wheel
to the attendant – raising her voice and waving her arms, demanding to speak to
a manager and, in all, doing everything she could to invoke the ‘alarm
response’. And it worked. The attendant checked for spare seats, made
some calls, and the woman and her son were rushed through to the departure
gate.

Witnessing this scene in a state of shock and awe, the very fabric of his belief system being torn to shreds, The Spear
quickly walked up to the attendant and asked if he could also be put on the
earlier flight. But alas, no, the
squeaker and her son had apparently pinched the last two seats on the flight,
and The Spear was told that he had missed out.
But then again, The Spear may simply not have been squeaking loudly
enough, as she didn’t even go through the motions of pretending to check for
any other spare seats.

The problem with squeakers is that, while they do elicit the
deployment of resources, they do not necessarily have them directed to the
right places. Unlike wheels, human
squeakers, or perhaps more fittingly, squawkers, largely do not squeak from a
position of need, but rather of want. While
a squeaky wheel implies a lack of grease, a squeaky person often implies nothing
more than a lack of respect for the wants and needs of others. Unless driven to the point of insanity, people
squeak when they choose to; wheels squeak when they must.

Habitual squeakers can however be their own worst enemy in
the long run. When applied to the same target
numerous times, their constant pleas for aide can see them labeled as wolf-criers. It is just a pity that most serial
complainers don’t stay put for long enough to allow for identification and consequent
filtering of their complaints to the backburner.